Bariloche!

I arrived in Puerto Montt after a 12 hour bus ride from Santiago, fairly draining but nothing I couldn´t handle. I had an hour only of waiting time for transfer, so I searched for a restaraunt, but nothing was open on Sunday at 10 in the morning. I ended up buying a bit of groceries at a supermarket, bread and cheese, yogurt, chips, peanuts, and a liter of beer to relax on the tail end of my long journey. I crossed over into the Argentinean border around 230 in the afternoon, arriving in Bariloche around 530 in the evening. The drive there was stunning, through the lake district of Argentina, surrounded by beautiful, soaring mountains and gorgeous vistas.

Bariloche was beautiful, a scenic little ski town nestled at the banks of one of the giant lakes in the region. It was indeed, truly, Lord of the Rings type scenery as my friend had promised me. My hostel, Patanuk Guesthouse, was right on the lake as well, with a fantastic view of all the mountains around across the giant lake. I immediately put myself into travel mode, where I just talk to everyone and as many people as possible. Especially traveling by yourself, this is something you just have to do if you dont want to do everything alone. I met a group of Australian guys, who were actually there working, which I was jealous about. They were going out to dinner though, so I started talking to a woman sitting by herself drinking yerba mate by the window. Eugenia was a 30 year old real estate agent in Buenos Aires, down in Bariloch for holiday, who I shared a couple drinks of piscola with (Argentineans do not drink piscola the same way we did in Chile, it is virtually nonexistent in the country as far as I can tell).

She went to sleep for a while, but I stayed awake for some reason and mingled a little more. Met a couple of reallly cool French people, Stephan and his girlfriend Sandrine, and his friend Sebastian. The hostel was quiet though, at one point me being the only person there. She got up at around 1130, introduced me to her traveling companian Ariel, and the three of us cooked some pasta for dinner. We went out to explore the town that night, but nothing much seemed to be going on. I could have been down for a loud club next to our hostel, but since I was with two 30 year olds, they didnt seem to be interested which was fine with me. We ended up back at the hostel around 3, and I went to sleep exhausted from the poor sleep on the bus the night before.

The next morning I woke up vaguely early, since Stephan and Sandrine had been talking about going to Cerro Catedral, the nearby mountain, to check out some skiing. I wasnt sure whether I wanted to tag along, but ended up going, since I figured I might as well. The bus ride was only 5 pesos or something anyways, like just over 1 USD, compared to the 22 dollar roundtrip bus we took in Chile. Unfortunately the conditions were not that good that day, although it was generally a letdown anyways after Chile.

As someone explained to me, the Andes in Argentina are more of the foothills whereas Chile has the real mountains, as I noted the difference myself. Chile had no trees whatsoever, Bariloche had a large amount of green vegetation on the slopes. Either way, there was a lot of rain and wind on top of the mountain, so only two lifts were open and the mountain was closing early, so I opted not to spend well over a hundred bucks on this. The town at the bottom was nice, a European style conglomerate of ski shops and restaraunts, so I stopped in one that looked promising and ordered a beer and pizza. It was my first introduction to Chilean beer, as I ordered a Quilmes, the local Argentinean beer. The Cristal, which I had, was smooth and light but quite tasty, no complaints on my part. After lunch, I embarked on a short hike up the mountain, to a viewpoint of the lake, before returning to the bus back to town.

I got back into town, checked into the hostel, and decided to walk to the bus station to buy my ticket for Buenos Aires the next evening. The lady at the hostel must have been playing games with me, since she told me no worries, the station is only like 10, maybe 12 blocks away...I ended up walking almost 3 miles there, it was by no means a short walk. However, it was all across the lake, and I got a much better feel for the area on foot, so I ultimately really enjoyed it. My two tickets, from Bariloche to Buenos Aires then from BA to Iguazu, cost 150 dollars total, at the top level class, and traveling thousands of miles, so quite reasonable overall. On the way back, I detoured to a Paleontological museum, basically a collection of trees along the beach of the lake, quite nice.

Dinner was at an Italian restaraunt across the street, I got fried mozzerala with tomato sauce and a spaghetti with four cheese sauce, and a big liter of beer, all for around 25 dollars USD including tip. And this was a fancy restaraunt. Damn Argentina is cheap. I had another easy night, playing cards with the French people and falling asleep fairly early, I was tired from the long day.

The next day was my last in Bariloche, so I set off to hit the town center, to get some food and do a little shopping. I bought a couple t-shirts at one of the first couple shops I found, 15 bucks total for the 2 of them. Lunch was potato gnocchi with a four cheese sauce, following the pasta trend, quite tasty, at a popular local Irish pub. In the afternoon when I came back, I felt like burning, so I spun fire on the beach of the lake, against the beautiful scenery. There was a video taken of me spinning even, quite fun despite the daylight and absence of darkness. I set off shortly afterwards for my bus, 20 hours to Buenos Aires.